Home

Home was a nightclub at 1 Leicester Square in central London, built as part of the Home chain that also ran a sister venue in Sydney and the Homelands outdoor festivals. It opened its doors in September 1999 and was widely regarded as one of the UK's foremost superclubs during its brief existence.

The building itself was a purpose-converted multi-storey venue, with Home spread across seven or eight floors and costing around £8.5 million to fit out. It had a capacity of 2,400, making it one of the largest clubbing destinations in the capital at the time, and it became known for unusually strict door policies alongside its scale and ambition.

Paul Oakenfold was the club's most high-profile name, taking up a weekly residency and the title of director of music policy, while fellow residents Steve Lawler, Tim Sheridan, Paul Barkworth, Danny Rampling, Dave Haslam and Dave Ralph also played regularly across its various rooms. The booking policy leaned towards house and trance, reflecting the dominant sounds of the superclub era as the format spread from provincial cities into the West End.

Home's run was short and turbulent. Westminster Council refused the club a 6am licence early on, which hit its trading, and worse was to follow when an undercover police operation uncovered what was described as open and serious Class A drug dealing on the premises. Westminster Council revoked the venue's entertainment licence in March 2001, an almost unprecedented step for a club of its size, and the business went into receivership soon afterwards, with founder Ron McCulloch calling the closure catastrophic.

The building did not return to clubbing success. Another nightclub, The Marquee Club, operated there from 2004 but closed within eighteen months, and the premises later became a studio for MTV's UK version of Total Request Live. More recently the address has been reported as being converted into a large branch of the bakery chain Greggs, closing the loop on one of London's shortest-lived but most talked-about superclub experiments.